When we were in high school, we read a story called “Leiningen Versus the Ants.” Written in 1938 by Carl Stephenson, it somehow made it into every high school anthology in the 1960s.  In this story, Leiningen is a South American plantation owner who fights off an army of invading ants.  Memories of its more gruesome scenes still give me a shudder, all these years later.  It was a tale of man winning at least a temporary battle over nature.

I see myself as a modern day Leiningen in my ongoing battle to keep squirrels away from my bird feeders.  Over the years, I have purchased many allegedly “squirrel proof” feeders.  You know, the kind that have a spring inside and automatically close when the weight of the squirrel hits the bar. Yeah, those don’t work.  Somehow the squirrels always manage to jailbreak them so they can feast away or else totally break them and make them unusable. 

In another attempt to keep the squirrels at bay, I bought a long hook and attached it to the railing of my back deck and hung a feeder from there. Ha! The joke was on me as the squirrels did impossible backbends and gymnastics to retrieve the seeds.  It was a veritable Squirrel Olympics.

Before you accuse me of hard-heartedness, I would like to observe that the squirrels in my backyard each have buried about 10,000 acorns, according to wildlife experts.  They are able to find about 80 percent of these nuts, which should be enough to keep them happy over the winter.  I would also like to point out that, officially, squirrels are  mammals of the order Rodentia, just like mice and rats, and I don’t want to feed any of them.

Apparently, there is something called the 5-7-9 rule to keep squirrels away from birdfeeders. One is supposed to plant a pole at least five feet high, seven feet away from any structure or tree that could give them a launching pad and nine feet below any building or branch that they could jump from.  I don’t know about this.  Sounds like a lot of work to determine where such a feeder would go, and I’m not convinced that a squirrel couldn’t climb up the pole anyway.  Never underestimate the power of a hungry squirrel.

The most satisfactory solution I have found is small clear bird feeders that stick to my windows using suction cups.  The occasional squirrel will try to climb up a nearby shepherd hook, but the feeder is too high and far away for him to leap from.  The best they can hope for are the few seeds that fall to the ground.

And seriously, that is all right with me.  I don’t want to feed squirrels or chipmunks or mice, or bears, for that matter. These feeders are strictly for the birds.